The General Management Department of Regulated Business at GAS NATURAL FENOSA has appointed Raúl Suárez Álvarez as the new Director of Unión Fenosa Distribución, the multinational energy company’s distribution subsidiary in Spain. Suárez plans to continue the work carried out by the previous Director, Luis Zarauza.
He will thus maintain the investment profile carried out in recent years in the field of electrical distribution and stressed that “we will focus resources on the strengthening of infrastructures, whilst also promoting innovation and the application of new technologies that have allowed us to achieve a more than 44% improvement in the quality of service indicators over the past 10 years”.
Raúl Suárez is a Senior Civil Engineer from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and has several postgraduate degrees in energy business management. He started at the Group in 2000, undertaking work in Electrical Distribution and Construction Projects in Spain and Nicaragua. He initially focused his career in the field of Grid Development, before taking on the role of Head of Projects and Logistics in the GAS NATURAL FENOSA Shared Regulated Business Services Department, between 2009 and 2014. In early 2014, he was appointed as Director of Gas Natural Andalucía, the multinational’s distribution subsidiary in Andalusia, managing the Spain Gas Distribution System Management Department; a post which he had occupied up until now.
Unión Fenosa Distribución
The GAS NATURAL FENOSA electricity distributor is the third-largest Spanish operator. It operates in Galicia (where it is the largest electricity distributor), Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y León. Unión Fenosa Distribución has invested more than 750 million euros in the 2015-2017 period in order to strengthen the grid and improve the quality of supply.
At the end of 2017, the company had more than 3,720,000 supply points (3,720,509), with a net annual increase of 18,602 points. Furthermore, 96% of the meters installed were already smart and 94% of billing was done remotely.
Its Interruption Time Equivalent to Installed Capacity (TIEPI) was 47 minutes, placing it as one of the distributors with the best quality of supply in Europe.
SEDA Project
Over the past year, Unión Fenosa Distribución has developed 15 initiatives that make up the SEDA, Segovia Advanced Distribution, project. SEDA is a pioneering project in Spain with three main goals: to offer customers new services, reinforce the quality of supply, and report the status of the grid in real time.
These initiatives aim to: automate the management of the medium- and low-voltage electrical grids, which are closest to the point of consumption; improve the monitoring of the transformation lines and centres; analyse the data gathered by the new smart meters and offer more information and new services for users connected to these networks.
The GAS NATURAL FENOSA subsidiary has been deploying the necessary technology in Segovia over the last few years to convert the city’s electrical grid into a smart infrastructure. Nearly 100% of the household electricity meters (34,340) are smart meters, and in recent years we have worked on 225 substations, installing the monitoring and automation equipment needed to monitor the grid and transmit the data from the meters to the company’s computer systems.
